Pet cats and dogs can remember the location of their food bowls and sometimes even how to perform tricks or find their way home. But just how good (or bad) are these fur balls at remembering the minutia of their days?
It depends on how useful those memories are to them, evolutionarily speaking, experts told Live Science.
Take free-roaming dogs, for example. About 75 percent of the world’s dogs aren’t pets and don’t live in human homes, said Monique Udell, an assistant professor of animal and rangeland sciences at Oregon State University. A memory that helps dogs excel at scavenging can help them survive on the streets, Udell said.
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